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This story was updated May 19, 2025, to correct the date of The League of Women Voters of the Helena Area event.
5/19/2025
“Helena This Week” is reported and written By JoVonne Wagner. Send your Helena news and tips to [email protected].
Without NEA grants, theater cancels shows, educational programming
After losing $80,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Myrna Loy in Helena has been forced to cancel shows and collaborations, impacting arts accessibility and educational outreach for the Helena community, according to theater officials.
In a recent newsletter, Myrna Loy executive director Benji Cosgrove announced that the National Endowment for the Arts had terminated three previously awarded grants, affecting several of its planned programs.
The NEA is a federally funded government agency established in 1965 by Congress to promote arts education and research. It is the largest funding source for nonprofit art organizations throughout the country.
According to Cosgrove, the NEA rescinded the funding because the projects tied to the grants were no longer aligned with the endowment’s priorities.
“No shit,” Cosgrove wrote in the Myrna Loy newsletter. “Probably because when we applied for the grants, we did so based on the NEA’s priorities at the time – which included controversial things like rural access to arts, arts opportunities for students, and presenting Indigenous culture-bearers.”
NEA funds would have enabled the theater to offset artist fees, transportation and lodging, produce shows in the fall centered on Black music and poetry within Montana’s history and bring Indigenous artists to Helena for the upcoming season, according to Cosgrove.
Each event included educational workshops planned throughout Helena and the public school district.
“ I think it’s really important that people understand that the NEA funds aren’t just making us money,” Cosgrove told Montana Free Press. “They’re for the public, the community access to these artists, and the access means coming to see an amazing show by an artist that you haven’t heard of before, but there’s something about them that we feel like is important to bring to the community.”
Myrna Loy first received notice that one of the grants, about $25,000, had been canceled in February, after the Trump administration’s executive order imposed a federal funding freeze.
With the loss of that grant, Cosgrove said, the Myrna Loy had to cancel a show just three weeks before the production and inform the commissioned artists that it could no longer afford their travel expenses.
In addition to canceling performances, the Myrna Loy, which sets its budget with grant funding in mind, had to adjust and try to make up its losses through fundraising, Crosgrove said.
While he is unsure if the theater will receive more funding from the NEA, Crosgrove said he applied for another grant next year. However, he is worried that the endowment is at risk of being completely defunded, which could impact the art community throughout Montana.
“Because what happens is the NEA not only does direct grants like our grants, it also supports the statewide art councils,” Cosgrove said. “So, like our Montana Arts Council is funded in part by the NEA. If that funding goes away for them, what happens to their smaller grants that are actually really important to small venues across the state?”
Despite what Cosgrove described as an unsure time in the art world, he remains hopeful that the Myrna Loy and other organizations can persevere.
“ I would say nonprofit arts organizations are some of the most creative people in the state. So we are gonna figure out ways to make it work,” Cosgrove said. “We’re gonna find funding, we’re gonna find programs that we can maybe make a little more money on to pay staff, so I think there is definitely optimism.”
Public Notice
Civic Education for All: The League of Women Voters of the Helena Area is inviting the public to its next meeting for presentations about voting rights, election information and the relationship between the Montana Constitution and the three branches of government. The event will be on Tuesday, May 20, at the Lewis & Clark Library, 120 S. Last Chance Gulch, from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
5 Things to Know in Helena
County growth policy draft ready: Lewis and Clark County’s growth policy and land-use map are now available for the public to view after several months of meetings, open houses and input from city and county committees. Both Helena and the county will hold several public hearings and community events over the next two months to engage the community on how priorities landed within the draft land-use map. The first hearing will be on Wednesday, May 28, at the City-County Building, 316 N. Park Ave., in room 330 at 6 p.m.
Shelter groundbreaking: Last week, Family Promise broke ground on its new shelter at 2814 N. Cooke St., as the organization seeks to address the needs of families, women and children experiencing homelessness. The project is estimated to cost about $1.2 million and is expected to be completed by December, according to Family Promise executive director Renee Bauer.
School re-boundary discussion continues: During a school board meeting last week, Superintendent Rex Weltz updated trustees on the district’s potential plan to change school boundaries to balance student populations primarily in the middle and high schools. Weltz said the need for the adjustment comes from Helena’s growth and how new housing developments, along with maintaining equal educational opportunities and services, impact students. The board is expected to vote on the boundary proposal this August.
Supaman comes to the walking mall: Next week, Lewis and Clark Public Health and Ten Mile Creek Brewery will host a free concert featuring award-winning Apsáalooke artist Supaman, as a part of its alcohol education campaign, “Let’s Talk About Alcohol.” The concert will be held on Thursday, May 22, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in front of Ten Mile Creek Brewery, 48 N. Last Chance Gulch. The event aims to destigmatize the conversation around alcohol consumption and moderation, according to the county’s public health department.
2025 Spirit of Service: The United Way of the Lewis and Clark Area held its third annual Spirit of Service clean-up day last week. Volunteers assisted homeowners across Helena, East Helena and the valley who were either veterans, disabled or elderly and needed maintenance work. This year, United Way had 20 teams that worked on 20 houses around the Helena area.
“We see more and more applications each year, and we try to do as much as possible,” United Way executive director Emily McVey wrote in a press release. “We do save the applications from year to year if we have to say no. We never want a person to go without the help they need. If we can, we try to find them the resources from another source; it is the United Way.”
3 Questions For
Earlier this month, Helenans elected Jenny Murnane Butcher as a new school board trustee for the Helena Public Schools. Murnane Butcher, a former East Helena Public Schools teacher, spoke with MTFP about her priorities and experience as she enters the Helena School District. Her comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MTFP: What is your educational background and how do you see your experience benefiting your role as a school board trustee?
Murnane Butcher: I started out my career as a teacher in East Helena, where I primarily taught Title I and fifth grade, and I taught through covid and after covid. I became really frustrated with some of the bigger picture challenges that I couldn’t address from the day-to-day in my classroom.
I started looking at pursuing a larger policy focus, and so I started working for Montanans Organized for Education, which is a nonprofit that engages community members and parents with the legislative process around education or the Board of Public Ed or their local school board and just get folks engaged.
I also recently completed my education policy master’s from Johns Hopkins. I was able to take an education finance class, which was one of my favorite classes in that program. And so that’s kind of what prompted me to run for trustee in Helena. I think that we have some really challenging financial times, and I think I have the background knowledge to help out the district and to really put teacher and student wellbeing at the forefront, given my experience in the classroom as we have to make some of those really tough financial decisions.
MTFP: Discuss your priorities within HPSD and how you plan to address them.
Murnane Butcher: I was able to tour most of the schools across the district during my campaign, and this just really reinforced some of the priorities that I had going into the election. The first one [is] student and teacher wellbeing post-covid. I know we’ve seen a huge increase in mental health challenges for students, which puts a lot of pressure on educators, which I experienced firsthand in the classroom. So I wanted to be able to face this financial crisis head-on while keeping those needs at the forefront.
I think some other priorities for me would be infrastructure. We in Helena have long kind of kicked the can down the road on infrastructure investments or even running bonds, and so I think we need to be really strategic about when we run bonds, making sure voters know what we’re using that for and what their return on investment is, and really addressing some of the major infrastructure needs across the district.
My third priority would be long-term financial stability. I think we’ve been put in a really tough place where we have to be making really tough cuts every year, and I would love for us to be able to get to a point where we have more of a long-term financial plan. It might mean some really tough decisions on the front end, so we’re not in this constant budget crisis year to year.
MTFP: Given the recent controversy over the infrastructure maintenance backlog and the possibility of closing Hawthorne Elementary, how do you plan on maintaining impactful communication between the district and the community?
Murnane Butcher: I think, first of all, it’s really important to listen to multiple perspectives.
I think that was one thing I really appreciated about the [district’s] budget consensus committee process is we had community members, we had parents from multiple schools across the district, we had educators and administrators, so that process really allowed me an opportunity to hear multiple perspectives on some of these big issues.
I think in public comment, it is really important to hear what folks are saying and why they care about it, and ways that you can possibly address it while also taking into account the needs of all kids across the district who might not have an advocate who can come to a school board meeting.
Might Be Fun
Trivia Night: Visit Helena, with the support of the Helena Chamber of Commerce, will host a trivia night with the theme, “Think you know Helena?” on Monday, May 19, beginning at 6 p.m. at Mt. Ascension Brewing, 317 Cruise Ave.
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